1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a composite combination for launching a payload into space, comprising a hypersonic spacecraft carrying said payload and designed to take off from the ground on an aircraft and then to propel said payload on its own toward an assigned trajectory, said combination comprising means for separating said vehicle from said aircraft.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A combination of the above kind is described in the article “The VEHRA demonstrator” published in May 1999, in issue number 44 of the journal “News from Prospace”, published by the French company PROSPACE.
The combination is based on the VEHRA spacecraft designed by the applicant to reduce the cost of placing a satellite in low Earth orbit, VEHRA standing for “véhicule hypersonique réutilisable aéroporté” (“air-launched reusable hypersonic vehicle”).
The vehicle is designed to be mounted on the back of a large aircraft, for example an Airbus A300, which transports it to an altitude of around 10 km at which the vehicle separates from the aircraft and follows a specific suborbital trajectory under the thrust of its own engine. The vehicle reaches an altitude of 100/120 km at a speed from Mach 8 to Mach 12. After the engine is extinguished, a payload exits a compartment of the vehicle to be installed in a predetermined orbit.
The vehicle reenters the atmosphere in hypersonic flight and lands for subsequent reuse in other missions. In this way it is possible to launch economically a small satellite, for example weighing 250 kg, possibly equipped with a consumable stage, into a low earth orbit (at an altitude from 100 to 200 km, for example).
Clearly a particularly difficult stage of the flight as described above is that during which the vehicle and the aircraft separate from each other. The trajectories that each must then follow, after separation, must obviously be followed rigorously, in particular to prevent a collision between the vehicle and the aircraft.
It is specifically an object of the invention to ensure separation of the vehicle and the aircraft under optimum safety conditions.